Android 12 beta now available.

[eric002]

Yeah, I’ve very rarely drained my battery that low but I should do it a little but more often.

 

[cbreze]

I think my 4a is giving me the best battery life of any android phone I’ve ever used. Always get thru the day with power to spare.
No complaints.

 

[anon(50597)]

I think my 4a is giving me the best battery life of any android phone I’ve ever used. Always get thru the day with power to spare.
No complaints.

Do you think you've seen an improvement with OS updates? It's hard to tell for me.

 

[Scott337]

Looks like the Play Store went back to the Android 11 style, no more multiple clicks to get to app updates

 

[anthonium]

I ended up uninstalling the beta. After some time of use I just don't feel the new UI maximizes the use of space on the screen. I feel notifications both on lock screen and on pull down menu feel cramped. On Android 11 I am able to immediately see more information displayed in notifications. The UI overall feels too cluttered for my liking even in the settings. I know this will be the future of Android but for now I'll enjoy the old UI while it lasts. If only there was some sort of legacy UI option in the future...

 

[Scott337]

I ended up uninstalling the beta. After some time of use I just don't feel the new UI maximizes the use of space on the screen. I feel notifications both on lock screen and on pull down menu feel cramped. On Android 11 I am able to immediately see more information displayed in notifications. The UI overall feels too cluttered for my liking even in the settings. I know this will be the future of Android but for now I'll enjoy the old UI while it lasts. If only there was some sort of legacy UI option in the future...

The new overly large notification area will definitely be a big change for everyone (and probably not liked very much).

 

[cbreze]

Do you think you've seen an improvement with OS updates? It's hard to tell for me.

I can’t really tell if android 12 has made any diff. For sure it is no worse, but I’ve had fantastic battery since day one with this device. Going from 11 to 12 I can’t say I see any change, still great!

 

[cbreze]

The new overly large notification area will definitely be a big change for everyone (and probably not liked very much).

I like it. Easy to read and I can quickly swipe away what I don’t need to see , if I want to expand it out I just tap the down arrow on the upper right.

 

[eric002]

I like it. Easy to read and if I want to expand it out I just tap the down arrow on the upper right.

Yep yep, I must completely agree with you. I love Being able to tap down on the more significant and bigger down arrow to expand each notification.

 

[anon(50597)]

I like it. Easy to read and I can quickly swipe away what I don’t need to see , if I want to expand it out I just tap the down arrow on the upper right.

Agreed. I'm liking it also. Much cleaner looking.

 

[anthonium]

The new overly large notification area will definitely be a big change for everyone (and probably not liked very much).

I just feel like the UI is more favorable to phones with bigger screens. I'm on the Pixel 4A and it feels cramped. I'm sure it will look great on the rumored Pixel 6 devices that will have larger screens. Personally I like things to look a bit smaller and not so big. I guess the other option is to change the display size in the menu settings to something smaller but that affects text size in every app. Like all things, it will take some getting used to the new UI.

I do have to say that for some reason I felt I was getting longer battery life when using the beta. Surprisingly!

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

My battery life halved when I moved to the beta. I was disappointed but still got just around a day. After beta 2.1 update my battery life went back up to what it got on Android 11 and is amazing again at 2 days medium use.

I love the interface but I have a 6.2" screen and I like the bigger style. Easier on my eyes. I already have my text size quite large on my phone.

 

[eric002]

My battery life halved when I moved to the beta. I was disappointed but still got just around a day. After beta 2.1 update my battery life went back up to what it got on Android 11 and is amazing again at 2 days medium use.

I love the interface but I have a 6.2" screen and I like the bigger style. Easier on my eyes. I already have my text size quite large on my phone.

i agree with you about he battery life on beta 2.1. However, I never really noticed bad battery even on beta 2.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

My bleeding phone force factory reset this morning. I installed lawnchair launcher to use custom icons. Suddenly the pixel launcher crashed and kept crashing. The phone restarted but went to recovery for a factory reset.

So I am setting it back up now but it is a bleeding nuisance. Not installing any custom launchers until the stable build in the autumn.

Until then thank goodness this is a backup phone and not the one with all my important data. My photos and videos are air backed up to Amazon photos and one drive and google photos so I didn’t lose them and the phone had done an auto backup of the system early this morning. So I was able to restore a backup as late as possible.

But a nuisance none the less.

 

[eric002]

My bleeding phone force factory reset this morning. I installed lawnchair launcher to use custom icons. Suddenly the pixel launcher crashed and kept crashing. The phone restarted but went to recovery for a factory reset.

So I am setting it back up now but it is a bleeding nuisance. Not installing any custom launchers until the stable build in the autumn.

Until then thank goodness this is a backup phone and not the one with all my important data. My photos and videos are air backed up to Amazon photos and one drive and google photos so I didn’t lose them and the phone had done an auto backup of the system early this morning. So I was able to restore a backup as late as possible.

But a nuisance none the less.

Oh my freaking God I am so sorry to hear that! I understand how you must feel! I remember that when on Android 11 my Google Assistant in my pixel bud stopped working, I had to force reset my entire phone because it wouldn't work directly. And it's a pain in the butt to set back up believe me I know. Even though you know which apps you need, I wish you the best of luck, and hopefully it's not too too annoying!

 

[Deleted member 2609113]

My bleeding phone force factory reset this morning. I installed lawnchair launcher to use custom icons. Suddenly the pixel launcher crashed and kept crashing. The phone restarted but went to recovery for a factory reset.

So I am setting it back up now but it is a bleeding nuisance. Not installing any custom launchers until the stable build in the autumn.

Until then thank goodness this is a backup phone and not the one with all my important data. My photos and videos are air backed up to Amazon photos and one drive and google photos so I didn’t lose them and the phone had done an auto backup of the system early this morning. So I was able to restore a backup as late as possible.

But a nuisance none the less.

A phone user's greatest nightmare. You took all of the proper backup precautions which is a bit of a consolation. At least it gives you the opportunity to clear out all the trash thats built up and reassess which apps to reinstall and which are superfluous to your needs.
Just trying to look on the bright side.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

A phone user's greatest nightmare. You took all of the proper backup precautions which is a bit of a consolation. At least it gives you the opportunity to clear out all the trash thats built up and reassess which apps to reinstall and which are superfluous to your needs.
Just trying to look on the bright side.

Definitely. I had to do that last restore. When I first installed the beta I got a load of errors and I restored as a fresh install and literally installed what I needed and it has made this reset a lot easier.

Just beware of mandatory resets. Happened out of the blue. Just a random app install and it self destructed.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

Oh my freaking God I am so sorry to hear that! I understand how you must feel! I remember that when on Android 11 my Google Assistant in my pixel bud stopped working, I had to force reset my entire phone because it wouldn't work directly. And it's a pain in the butt to set back up believe me I know. Even though you know which apps you need, I wish you the best of luck, and hopefully it's not too too annoying!

Thanks. It wasn't too painful. Worse was my Samsung as I have a 512GB and over 100GB of data on it. Luckily I backed things up for that too but it took a day to restore and login to all my apps.

 

[Deleted member 2609113]

Definitely. I had to do that last restore. When I first installed the beta I got a load of errors and I restored as a fresh install and literally installed what I needed and it has made this reset a lot easier.

Just beware of mandatory resets. Happened out of the blue. Just a random app install and it self destructed.

Actually as much as it is a pain in the arse a complete restore once or twice a year isn't a bad idea. Just plan for it and so all the proper backups and be selective is the restore. Don't want to replicate the issues that might be fixed with the reset and restore.

 

[anthonium]

Great that you had backup! Reminds me of the time my original gen 1 Pixel actually just shut down and never restarted. Never got it to work again and had to buy a new phone. Lost a couple of photos of my wife and I in central park in New York. I don't think my wife ever forgave Google for that! She sticks to her iPhone. Haha.

Now I frequently manually make Google photos free up storage and back up photos. Fortunately I'm not a heavy phone user and aside from the preinstalled stock apps I literally have 6 other apps I install separately from the app store.